Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) over the last decade demonstrate that machines can exhibit communicative behavior and influence how humans think, feel, and behave. In fact, the recent development of ChatGPT has shown that large language models (LLMs) can be leveraged to generate high-quality communication content at scale and across domains, suggesting that they will be increasingly used in practice. However, many questions remain about how knowing the source of the messages influences recipients' evaluation of and preference for AI-generated messages compared to human-generated messages. This paper investigated this topic in the context of vaping prevention messaging. In Study 1, which was pre-registered, we examined the influence of source disclosure on people's evaluation of AI-generated health prevention messages compared to human-generated messages. We found that source disclosure (i.e., labeling the source of a message as AI vs. human) significantly impacted the evaluation of the messages but did not significantly alter message rankings. In a follow-up study (Study 2), we examined how the influence of source disclosure may vary by the participants' negative attitudes towards AI. We found a significant moderating effect of negative attitudes towards AI on message evaluation, but not for message selection. However, for those with moderate levels of negative attitudes towards AI, source disclosure decreased the preference for AI-generated messages. Overall, the results of this series of studies showed a slight bias against AI-generated messages once the source was disclosed, adding to the emerging area of study that lies at the intersection of AI and communication.

翻译：过去十年人工智能的进步表明，机器能够展现沟通行为并影响人类的思维、情感和行为。事实上，最近ChatGPT的发展表明，大语言模型（LLMs）可用于跨领域大规模生成高质量沟通内容，这预示着它们将在实践中得到更广泛应用。然而，关于信息源知晓如何影响接收者对AI生成与人类生成信息的评价和偏好，仍存在诸多未解问题。本文以电子烟预防信息为情境展开研究。在研究1（预先注册）中，我们考察了来源披露对人们评价AI生成与人类生成健康预防信息的影响。研究发现，来源披露（即标注信息源为AI或人类）显著影响信息评价，但并未显著改变信息排名。在后续研究（研究2）中，我们考察了来源披露的影响如何因参与者对AI的负面态度而变化。我们发现，对AI的负面态度对信息评价存在显著调节效应，但对信息选择不显著。然而，对于对AI持有中等程度负面态度的群体，来源披露降低了其对AI生成信息的偏好。总体而言，本系列研究结果显示，一旦披露来源，人们对AI生成信息存在轻微偏见，这为人工智能与传播交叉领域的新兴研究提供了补充。